


but it's a long way back

by seaqueen



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-06-23 14:51:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15608691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaqueen/pseuds/seaqueen
Summary: Sasha has left his shoes by the door and his bags scattered between there and here; the familiar press of his apartment all around him. It’s an eerie mimic of last summer and the summer before that - save for the positions of the players. Last year, it had been Sasha standing and waiting for Zhenya’s return. It had been Sasha with the grief in his heart and still heavy sorrow that weighed on him; and Zhenya the triumphant victor ascendant.For a moment, the only sound is the faint whisper of music drifting in through the window.





	but it's a long way back

The room is quiet, when he slips inside. 

The door shuts behind him but Sasha’s eyes are already on the long shadow at the other end of the room; on the tall slender form of the man standing in the window. He doesn’t say anything. Zhenya doesn’t turn around.

Sasha has left his shoes by the door and his bags scattered between there and here; the familiar press of his apartment all around him. It’s an eerie mimic of last summer and the summer before that - save for the positions of the players. Last year, it had been Sasha standing and waiting for Zhenya’s return. It had been Sasha with the grief in his heart and still heavy sorrow that weighed on him; and Zhenya the triumphant victor ascendant.

For a moment, the only sound is the faint whisper of music drifting in through the window.

When Zhenya turns around his face is wiped clean of anything he might be feeling but Sasha doesn’t need that to know. It comes from being the one on the wrong end of this same situation for more than a decade, from the pain of heartbreak again and again and having to watch someone  _ else  _ get the chance that has slipped through his fingers time and time again. Let alone someone he loves.

“If it couldn’t be me…” Zhenya rasps, the words drawn out of him slow as molasses and twice as thick. “Then I’m glad it was you.”

Sasha breaks first. He’s reaching for Zhenya before he realizes, hands outstretched and palms turned upwards as he closes the remaining distance between them. Zhenya doesn’t push him away as he steps within reach, doesn’t resist as Sasha pulls him close and tips his face up to look at him.

For a moment, they only breathe; inches apart.

Sasha refuses to feel guilty for what he’s won, what he’s accomplished; to feel guilty for taking it away from Zhenya to do it. Zhenya wouldn’t ask him to anyway. Sasha had never asked it of him in his own turn. It’s easier in the years when they both lose, or when they play for the same team and share the joy and the pain together; but it was never going to be enough. They all want the prize and they all can’t have it. 

Someone always has to lose.

Sasha refuses to feel guilty for being the one who eliminated Zhenya from the playoffs and from chasing his dream again. Zhenya never has, and Sasha has never asked him to. They know, have known for years, what comes of playing together, against each other. Most days it’s good. Most days it’s fun, even - when the score of one individual game doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things and no matter victor or loser they still can find their time together and put it aside. But the playoffs have always been different, when the tide can turn on one game; one period - one shift or one play. When every moment matters.

It’s bad luck, Sasha thinks, that someone saw fit to arrange the universe so that again and again they are the ones forced to fight for survival. That there would always be a winner and a loser, and that it must come at the other’s hands. If Sasha were inclined to that kind of belief, he might have thought that it was the universe’s way of telling them they were never meant for one another.

And maybe they aren’t. Maybe they were always meant to be at one another’s throats as they were for years until love of country intervened.

But they’re still here all the same. 

Sasha has never believed in doing what he’s supposed to.

Zhenya kisses him then but it isn’t a kind kiss. He bites hard enough that Sasha’s lower lips stings and he tastes the brief flash of copper on his tongue. Sasha is bigger but Zhenya is taller - he moves and Sasha finds himself pinned against the glass with the other’s weight against him as Zhenya threads his fingers through the fine hairs at the base of his neck and  _ pulls.  _ The burst of pleasure-pain is enough to draw a gasp from Sasha, swallowed by the greedy heat of Zhenya’s mouth. Sasha feels caged in; surrounded.

“If it couldn’t be me, then I’m glad it was you.” Zhenya repeats, only this time it sounds as if he uses the words as a shield; as if he can fend off the bone deep misery with them. Sasha knows the feeling all too well. He chooses instead of answering to let his hands fall to Zhenya’s hips, one spreading across the smooth expanse of his lower back. Zhenya kisses him again and Sasha leans into it, opening his mouth to it and digging his fingers into his lover’s skin hard enough to bruise.

Years together and the off season is never easier. It doesn’t matter the reasons, the cause, - there is no ending in which happiness is unequivocal. Not when one or both of them falls short. There is nothing that can taint his joy and his jubilation at winning the Stanley Cup, nothing that can ever take it away or silence the pure unrelenting fire burning in Sasha’s heart at the vindication and the relief. But to see the man he loves reduced to misery is a different sort of unhappiness, and knowing there is nothing to be done but to feel it.

Sasha doesn’t begrudge Zhenya his despair. He doesn’t even begrudge him it now, on the heels of Sasha’s victory and his triumphant return to their homeland and to his lover. It’s fleeting. Beneath it he knows that Zhenya truly is happy for him, glad of Sasha’s accomplishment, and that he will be there to celebrate it with him. Sasha would rather this moment of despair and anger now, than have it swallowed and haunt them the rest of the summer. So too would Zhenya.

It’s their habit after all, in the years they’ve been together. It’s easier when it’s both of them, but still the emotion must be felt.

Zhenya fists a hand in the front of Sasha’s shirt and hauls him off the glass, turns and tosses him as if he weighs nothing onto the couch. Watches him with storm-dark eyes and tension strung whip tight across his shoulders before he moves, lunging to pin Sasha down and kiss him violently again. Hands tear at clothes with no thought, ripped apart until they are bare to one another, and Sasha cries out as Zhenya’s teeth sink into his skin. His hands leave bruises in their wake, and he is unkind as he takes what he wants from him.

After, when they are spent, Sasha can feel the wetness of his grief where Zhenya tucks his face into the curve of Sasha’s collarbone. He can feel the fine tremble of him beneath the soothing stroke of Sasha’s hand down his back. 

At the end of the day, this too shall pass. And they’ll both be Stanley Cup Champions, both have drank from that hallowed chalice and achieved childhood dreams. Maybe they won’t have done it together; and maybe those wins will have come at the expense of the other. But still there is a joy in it. And there is always another season.

A quiet hush settles over the room, the rest of the world faded and forgotten. 

“I love you.” Sasha whispers against the sweaty skin of Zhenya’s neck.

Zhenya doesn’t answer, but his arms tighten around him, and Sasha knows it all the same.

 


End file.
